Re: Decoupling JUnit and Hamcrest

Hi Stefan,

thank you for your feedback.

The JUnit team itself wants to get rid of the Hamcrest dependency.
Basically Hamcrest is an assertion library (like AssertJ, Truth, ...) and
it can be independent from JUnit. Therefore it must only use JUnit's
interfaces (AssertionError and AssumptionViolatedException) and JUnit must
not use Hamcrest. Both is possible, but it needs a new JUnit major release.

ciao,
stefan

2015-01-08 21:46 GMT+01:00 Stefan [email protected] [junit] <
[email protected]>:

>
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm not a developer of junit nor hamcrest and I don't feel the pain of the
> tight integration of junit and hamcrest that "prevents both from moving on"
> but I'm a heavy user of both.
> I don't think it's a good idea to separate the hamcrest integration from
> junit into it's own library.
>
> At the moment JUnit dictates the hamcrest version to be used but also
> guarantees compatibility with this version.
> With the new library hamcrest developers will dictate the junit version
> that is compatible with a specific hamcrest release. This is only a change
> in responsibility but has no benefits.
>
> Of course there is also the opportunity to provide a broader range of
> compatible versions. But this opportunity also means more work for the
> maintainers and slower adoption by users. JUnit 4.12 uses hamcrest 1.3.
> What if JUnit moves on to 4.13, 4.14 and hamcrest releases 2.0 and 2.1
> respectively. Will there be a version which is compatible with hamcrest 2.1
> and JUnit 4.13? Will there be a version which is compatible with JUnit 4.14
> and hamcrest 1.3?
>
> As a developer who want's to use JUnit 4.14 - *how do I know which
> hamcrest-junit-integration version to use? What will stop me from using a
> wrong version?* For example I might be tempted to update JUnit to 4.14
> but forget to update hamcrest-junit-integration. There might be changes of
> the behaviour of JUnit that might cause some of my tests to pass always
> although they should fail. On the other hand: JUnit 4.14 might be binary
> incompatible to JUnit 4.12 - where to look for the right version of
> hamcrest-junit-integration?
>
> If hamcrest moves on to 2.0 - which could be binary incompatible to 1.3
> due to the major version change (haven't checked) - *how long will
> hamcrest 1.3 be supported with latest JUnit versions by
> hamcrest-junit-integration?* I'm asking because we also use JMock which
> depends on hamcrest as well. If I update to an incompatible 2.0 I need also
> an update of JMock....
> (( Actually I cannot update JMock without big effort because there was an
> incompatible change from 2.5.1 to 2.6 .... ))
>
> On the other hand this will slow down speed for adoption of new JUnit
> versions because we have to wait until a new hamcrest-junit-integration
> version is out or at least someone has built the appropriate version with
> latest JUnit release and verified unit tests are still passing. It will
> also increase the effort necessary to try JUnit release candidates or
> snapshots in real projects (because I also have to checkout and build the
> integration library myself to be sure there is no problem with that... and
> if there is a problem I need to fix it myself or stop using latest JUnit
> release candidate).
>
> ----
> IMHO decoupling JUnit and hamcrest has more drawbacks than benefits.
> Although I see it can be a chance for hamcrest to move on. I don't think
> JUnit as a project will profit that much. JUnit users might have a broader
> choice of compatible hamcrest versions but this requires some effort (of
> the maintainers of hamcrest-junit-integration). I think this might only
> work well for JUnit users if the JUnit team commits to that integration
> project and is able to push out new releases of the
> hamcrest-junit-integration together with new JUnit releases.
>
>
> Regards,
> Stefan
>
>
> Am 07.01.2015 um 08:31 schrieb Stefan Birkner [email protected]
> [junit]:
>
>
>
> FYI: Nat Pryce took a first step for decoupling JUnit and Hamcrest:
> http://natpryce.com/articles/000806.html
>
>
>  
>